UConn Torrington grad returns to teach

Torrington >> Castle Yuran, a former University of Connecticut-Torrington student, will teach a writing course there as part of her graduate school program later this month.

Yuran hopes her five-week workshop writing course will give back to the school that has given her so much.

"I had so much support from everyone who believed in me there," said Yuran. "They believed that I was serious when I said, 'I want to be a writer.' Even professors who weren't in the English department; my philosophy professor and my math professor and all of them believed that I could do this and I got constant encouragement."

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Yuran decided UConn Torrington was the school where she would pursue her English degree, and made that important decision after just one visit.

"My mom went there back in the '70s," said Yuran. "She told me about it. We were driving around one day and decided I should just stop in for an impromptu interview. I did that, and I honestly didn't look at any other schools."

Yuran's mother, Robin, is a poet and former co-director of the Norfolk Library.

The small environment at UConn Torrington appealed to Yuran, she said, because she attended Northwestern Regional High School. The regional school in Winsted has about 750 students. Yuran began classes at UConn Torrington in 2006.

Yuran's creative writing professor, Davyne Verstandig, the former director of the Litchfield County Writers Project, remembered her from that impromptu interview when she was still a high school student.

"She knew she was a poet," said Verstandig. "She had no dilutions or illusions about what that meant."

Yuran joined the Litchfield County Writers Project shortly after arriving at school. She worked as an assistant for the project by setting up events, greeting guest speakers and writing press releases.

The Litchfield County Writers Project hosts a variety of programs through the year designed to encourage students' writing efforts and draw on the expertise of the county's literary community. Published authors of many genres take part in workshops, forums and other events that draw students into the literary community.

"I worked for them and I got to experience real writers coming in and seeing where these people had actually ended up, you know successful poets and writers," said Yuran.

During Yuran's time with the LCWP, writer Frank McCourt, of "Angela's Ashes" fame, was the biggest talent the project was able to bring in.

"That was huge," said Yuran. "It was very inspirational."

Yuran, along with fellow student Joshua Brunetti, founded a student-run campus writing group called WORD during her time at school.

"Castle was its leader for three years, from 2009 to 2012, and during that time, the group met weekly to workshop poetry and short stories, hosted several spoken word events, and sought out and submitted pieces to area writing contests," said Kathy Knapp, director of LCWP and WORD faculty advisor during Yuran's time at UConn Torrington. "Castle was not only the group's leader but its driving force."

Unfortunately, WORD no longer exists. Yuran said she carried it on for awhile after Brunetti graduated but eventually interest dwindled.

"At its peak, though, we had a great many students who would meet weekly to share work and do writing prompts," said Yuran.

After graduating from UConn Torrington with a bachelor's degree in English in 2011, Yuran went on to graduate school to get her MSA in creative writing at Goddard College in Vermont. Goddard is also a school her mother, Robin Yuran, attended.

Yuran began her low-residency graduate program in January 2012.

Yuran explained that a low-residency program means she only lives on campus in Vermont for one week at the beginning of each semester. During that time, she attends intensive workshops and advising meetings. Once she is at home, Yuran must send a packet of creative work and annotations of books she is reading to her advisor every three weeks. The semester is 15 weeks long, after which she has a month or two off before she must return to Vermont.

She is coming back to Torrington for the teaching practicum portion of her program. Yuran is required to log 15 hours of teaching.

Besides those requirements, the program is wide open, said Yuran. She could choose what she wanted to teach and where as long as it was supervised by an institution. "I chose [UConn Torrington] because I am comfortable there," said Yuran. "I know the people. I knew they would support me coming there for a class and they wouldn't have any stipulations or anything. They have a great space. They have a nice little seminar room."

Yuran said it took no time at all for the staff at UConn Torrington to agree to let her log her hours at their campus.

Verstandig believes Yuran will do well with teaching because she was very successful as a tutor at UConn Torrington's writing center.

"She's certainly someone who relates well to other people," said Verstandig. "She's approachable. That's why she was successful in the writing center. Students were comfortable sharing their work and asking for help."

Yuran's class will be a workshop style writing seminar. She will provide prompts to the students, and then allow them to explore their feelings through their writing.

"I have a different topic for every class and I'm going to bring in pieces of writing that focus on that topic and discuss with the class why they work," said Yuran. "Then give prompts for the class to basically be writing for the better part of the three hours."

Originally, Yuran's course was supposed to have begun at the beginning of February. However, she pushed back the start date so she could be sure her idea was sound.

"I realized I hadn't perfectly honed my teaching idea," said Yuran.

She thinks she has a better idea now, and her course is set to start on Friday, Feb. 22 from 6 to 9 p.m. The class will meet once a week for five weeks. Each class will be three hours long. According to Yuran, there are 9 people currently enrolled in the class.

"I really hope, first of all, they are comfortable enough to have a great time," said Yuran. "Second of all, can come up with something really substantial because I feel like I get to take classes like this when I'm at my residencies at Goddard. Whoever is teaching will say OK this is your time to write and I'm going to guide you a little bit but I'm going to let you go where you want to go also. I love that kind of thing and its important to have, as a writer, solid periods of time where you're allowed to just go crazy with what you want to write. I want that for the people who are taking [the class]."

Yuran said that she is nervous but very excited about the class. She thinks of this as an opportunity to give back to the community who helped her.